I wanted to try something a bit different for the pike. About a year ago I put the grizzly blonde pattern into the striper archive, but always had it in the back of my mind that it would make a good freshwater pattern as well.

These flies are sparser than what I normally tie for pike, and I have never fished them in such an application. I believe that the color, flash, and size are right, but ultimately the fish will be the judges.

Please let me know how you all do with this pattern. I'll be trying it here, but would like to know how it works elsewhere.

Mark, this looks good.
As far as Pike fly design goes, my general experience (mostly in stillwater/lakes) has been:
- The closer the shape ,e.g. girth, and size, e.g. length, of the fly mirrors any bait/forage in the water you are fishing, the better chance of hook up;
- Flash in the design is the most important element;
- Color is secondary to shape and bright is better than dark
- Material that flexes and/or pulses (the way the fly swims) is better than stiff material

From your pic and recipe, looks like you captured all of the essential elements!
Since I mostly fish in shallow water, not much deeper than 8 feet, I prefer flies without the weight of the epoxy head. Also I prefer a head that cause more water disturbance since the vibration is also an attractor element.
Moving water design criteria & techniques may be altogether different?
What are your views on this? Still water design Vs. moving water design?

Pete, I agree with everything that you posted. In my opinion, there isn't too much difference between the elements of a fly for still water vs. moving water pike. When I fish the rivers around here, about 80% of the action takes place in relatively shallow backwaters. The only time that the fish might be holding in moving water is when they are in depressions downstream of islands or humps, but even this is never really more than 10 feet deep and the fish aren't actually in the current. They are in the holes and out of the current. But for a fly to get to them, it needs weight (conehead or clouser eyes).

Epoxy does tend to make the flies sink a bit more quickly, and for that reason any deceiver type flies that I make for pike in shallow water have as little as possible. In fact, I'm going to experiment a bit with Softex to see how much of a difference that makes on sink rate. I remember sending some to you last year, and I confirmed what you also discovered: they had entirely too much epoxy, and the hooks were too heavy for the application. This is one of the reasons that I thought about the Blonde pattern, because the head is much smalller (less epoxy needed) and I'm now using Dai Rikki freshwater hooks.

I found exactly the same things to be true when I lived in Western Montana and fished for very large pike in the lower Flathead River and some of the irrigation ponds in the lower Flathead Valley. Movement, size (I tied my flies on some old Seally 2/0 3XL streamer hooks I found in a bargain bin at a fhop in Missoula, MT), and flash were the 3 most important elements for effective pike flies.

I also found these three to be the most important elements for musky in Pennsylvania's Susquahanna River and pickerel in the Delaware River.

The colors I liked most were: red & yellow (like the Micky Finn), red & white (just like the old spoon), and all black.